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More and more I’ve been seeing posts about “The GOPs War on Women”. Which is sort of funny because gays have less rights than women at the moment and if you’re a gay woman, god help you. Generally it goes something like “Limbaugh said something, look at it!” and it’s a video of Rush or someone saying something inflammatory. I usually just post back the Bill Maher video.

But, something more recently dawned on me. People don’t get it. People, if they bother to respond at all to the Maher video, usually defend it with “oh but it’s humor”. On the face of it, Rush too hosts a program which is just humor, or just commentary. The issue goes a little bit deeper than this, it’s not that the GOP or the Republicans or the Democrats have a war on women, it’s that you wouldn’t say these things in the workplace. (I actually had someone yell at me for posting the Maher video to their page in response because they did watch it at work, with the volume up, completely ignoring the warning in the first 5 seconds). This isn’t particularly about a “war on women”, from any particular side, this is about the permissiveness and moral decrepitude of the average voter. I wouldn’t make a racist joke at work anymore than I would make a joke about a woman at work. If you wouldn’t make the joke at work, why is it then OK to make these jokes about women from either political party? Call misogyny as misogyny and realize these are two sides of the same coin. This means both parties engage in this sort of things.

On the issue of gay rights it actually is even more subtle. The Republicans are the traditional boogeymen of gay rights, but has a Democrat President actually made gay marriage legal? So much anger and noise is invested in making a boogeyman for people to direct their rage towards that no-one has noticed the Democrats have done absolutely nothing for the gay rights issue. The best we’ve come up with is moving it to a states rights issue. This is a band-aide at best because we’ve otherwise codified the idea of marriage at the federal level (tax code). Really the only politician who has carried the Gay Marriage idea to the logical conclusion as it stands today is Ron Paul. If we got rid of the tax code, it really would be a states rights issue. This is the point of the entire rant though – neither party has worked to actually affirm or deny gay rights at the federal level.

On the idea of religious freedom for those of us who roll our own theology, this is another great place to point out the Democrats doing nothing for us. The Democrats have taken the separation of church and state to the point where any showing of religion is treated poorly. By the same token, the Republicans have embraced religion, but it’s usually ascribed as “Christianity”. Funny thing is though, three decades ago it was Catholicism. Now it’s “Mainsteam Christianity”. Now they’re talking about running a Mormon, and the only people who seem to have noticed he’s a Mormon are the Democrats. In terms of progressive religion, the Republicans are more open about discussing theology than the Democrats. You would think the party who was offended by the G word (God) would have already helped out with the other G word (gays) but when it comes time to put their money where their mouth is, it hasn’t happened. Instead they’re happy to accuse other people of being religiously motivated, but then they can’t execute when they’re supposedly “free” from such hangups.

The biggest problem here – a government which doesn’t want to acknowledge the divine – is that laws become inherently secular. What secular states have we seen in the past? The south before the civil war. World War 2 Germany. Can we cite any examples of states which allow for religion without being religious? Sweden comes to mind. It’s possible to find a middle ground here, but it’s also possible to be too far right or left. To be too far right subscribes to religious dogma and things would probably look like the Middle East, and to be too liberal results in comments from politicians comparing women to animals. Of course they’re animals – if you work from a worldview that there’s nothing particularly special about humans then we’re just particularly bald apes. The middle ground is to acknowledge that people are religious without espousing a religion. We can’t do that if we vote for the party that doesn’t talk about religion at all. (Actually this is the paintbrush of the Democrat Smear Machine. Don’t talk about religion so that anyone who even listens to Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” can be questioned).

On that theme of acknowledging things for what they are, we must also seek to understand things completely. A frightening number of people simply didn’t read the recent Georgia abortion law proposal about transvaginal ultrasounds. Instead, they reacted to a soundbite or the hilariously bad Huffington Post op ed on an op ed. “This person said women are animals!” isn’t thinking about the path this person took to get there, it’s simply an animal reaction to a comment without realizing that the apex of subscribing to evolution and denying the divine is that people are ultimately just very clever animals. This is where we know where people are married with kids, or pregnant. The unmarried, reactionist people operating on an animal level say “I wouldn’t want that in me!” But this is really the point. This medical tool didn’t spring gestalt from the pages of the proposed bill, whirring and throbbing veins intact. This medical tool (a transvaginal ultrasound device) has a legitimate purpose in pregnancy and it’s used by doctors all the time for pregnancy situations which might require surgery. What is abortion if not surgery? Do you really want the doctor grabbing around in there blind?

This previous paragraph is mostly for naught. If anyone had actually read the proposal, they would have seen the text included an opt out for this particular part of the procedure provided there was not a medical necessity to use the device for the protection of the mother during the course of the procedure. You can read HB 954 here. Also included was the objection that anesthesia drove the cost of the abortion up out of reach of “low income unprivileged women”. Lets think about that for a moment – why anesthesia? Because doctors who perform fetal surgery during and after the 2nd trimester know the fetus feels pain and that it will abort if it’s not anesthetized. So think about that, we’re performing abortions on fetuses, who we know from the medical establishment feel pain. Just because you can’t hear or see the pain doesn’t make it any more right than it wouldn’t be murder if I taped your mouth shut and dumped gasoline all over you. Why didn’t anyone bring this up? Because to acknowledge that the fetus feels pain and should be anesthetized because it’s the decent thing to do also acknowledges that the fetus is a person who has rights and we should be decent to our fellow people. But you can’t say that. We would rather call it a child in surgery and a fetus in an abortion setting so we can save a few dollars.

How do we fix this?

The average American voter won’t read the bills. Why anyone would participate in the political process without actually reading the results of the process is beyond me. How do we assess the performance of the governance of the state without reading the laws and proposals? To fix this situation, people need to actually start reading house bills and proposals rather than reading Fox News and Huffington Post. It’s fine to use them as a jumping off point, but half the things posted to Huffpo, for instance, wouldn’t pass muster on Wikipedia. If your source is an “anonymous doctor” and the blog “deletes stupid comments”, not only are you not getting a balanced discussion, but you’re not getting an article anyone would take seriously. Why would you base your political opinions on that?

Read the house bills. Read the proposals. Finally, remember that politicians should be judged both on what they are doing but also on what they’re not doing.

We’ve given a guy who served less than one term in senate (three years) the keys to the nuclear program. A guy who grew up in Indonesia, hardly a paragon of American values, has now taken the highest office in the land.

Hitler too, grew up in another country, but at least had the decency to serve his country before taking it over. Hitler too, had great oration. Hitler too, hardly participated in politics before taking the highest office and Hitler too implemented a policy of National Socialism.

So, what can we expect from a Democrat Party Supermajority? Well, for one, the red states and red state people are completely alienated. Pennsylvania? Mostly red except for Philadelphia. Barely a win. Florida? Barely a win. Literally 50% and some change. Ohio? Barely a win. So where does that leave us?

Well, it wasn’t the landslide that Obama wanted, and for every time the Democrats said that it was “all about the people” is going to bite them in the ass. If you felt alienated as a Democrat before, now the Republicans are going to jump on the bandwagon. We didn’t build it, but we’re glad to take ride.

What does the supermajority mean? The last time we had this was the early Clinton Administration. This brought us Blackhawk Down as Clinton pulled out of Somalia with little opposition, the assault weapons ban, and trickle down taxation along with massive outsourcing with the dot-bomb. I find it ironic that Bush Jr. brought the jobs back and along with it all the foreign talent. Some people can’t empathize with the assault weapons ban, they don’t understand that within every “hunting” gun, it’s just a “war” gun without the nasty looking pieces much in the same way the only thing separating your four cylinder fuel sipper and a sportscar is retuning the engine and some body work.

The dot-bomb bubble of 1999 is another good example of taxes and policy. Bill Clinton all but killed the tech market in America with the “tax the rich” initiative. This led to massive, massive outsourcing as it was simply cheaper to make money in another country. Trickle down economics would tell us that lowering taxes makes goods cheaper, higher taxes makes goods more expensive. Taxes are simply passed down to the consumer like every other cost. Obama’s Tax The Rich plan seems to assume that “The Rich” learned nothing under Clinton, and my best guess is that either “The Rich” is going to be redefined in short order or we’ll see another bout of outsourcing in certain sectors.

This doesn’t mean I was 100% happy with Bush. The $700bn housing bailout is a travesty and the war in Iraq was a success but not something that helped the economy. However I expect Obama to bring back Clinton policy and I expect his late career to look a lot more like Carter.

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I’m pretty sure he’s smoking crack. Someone has to be. Then again I never understood Bill Clinton either and thought the double-talk from him was just as bad. Couldn’t ever nail down an honest word from the guy. You might disagree with Bush’s policy, but it’s been a largely transparent presidency which is why no-one dare mention “impeachment” (except the UFO guy). Obama came to Philadelphia and I had plenty else to do (like shooting clays). John McCain has the lite version of the visit, but there’s much more to it. Both of the following can be found from the McCain page.

He said that Philadelphia needs change. “We don’t have a choice but to win.”

Obama retold the story of an unemployed man who offered to buy Obama and Casey a beer during one of their stops on the Pennsylvania bus tour. “Bob and I were at a sports bar trying to catch a little bit of the game. A guy offered to buy us a beer. We already had a beer we drank but he offered to buy us one,” Obama said. The man could not afford gas to drive around looking for a new job.

OK seriously – Philadelphia has been a Democratic stronghold for the last 10 some years, I can’t imagine why keeping the Democratic leadership would make it less of a shithole. Or bring about change, since voting Democrat would simply be voting the status quo. And what’s a guy who can’t afford gas doing pissing his money away at a sports bar? Considering the fact that his next line was about a balanced budget, the irony abounds.

Obama wraps with:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

That’s right, it’s Philadelphia, it’s a violent shithole of Democratic leadership, thank you for your understanding. Please leave the state as fast as possible Sir.

Both versions of the 1996 questionnaires provide answers his presidential campaign disavows to questions about whether Obama supports capital punishment and state legislation to “ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.”

He responded simply “No” and “Yes,” respectively, to those questions on both questionnaires.

Now it’s not to say that John McCain has the most squeaky clean record when it comes to gun control – he tried to close the “gun show loophole” (sales between private individuals are unregulated) and Arizona voters invited him out to the street to get shot. He took the clue and changed his course.

Frankly, it’s OK to be wrong. Bush admitted there was no “smoking gun” which is what we expected to find (there’s plenty of other reasons to hang Saddam) and apologized for it. McCain also apologized over his faux pas. Obama so far hasn’t apologized for anything and merely “clarified” his points. Thanks, we heard you the first time.